a cold day in hell.

Your brother is a dick.

This isn't like, new information or anything, you just like to remind yourself every now and again. Like on the count he spread around your name. Why in the name of the newest ring in Hell would you want that around? You wouldn't. Simple. In retaliation you taught the nasty little flesh blobs how to do good, purely to give your dearest older brother a hissy fit because he's a little bitch. For all intents and purposes, you aren't claiming to be better than him, the humans call you Evil, The Angel of Death, Last Breath, Final Goodbye, they call you The Bearer of The End Times but you don't actually give a shit about them — well, there was that whole shtik with Asteroth - Luci's son, The King of Rot, Bringer of Decay, Harborer of Famine - that kinda had you on your tail (not that you have a tail to be on, you don't, you may technically be fallen from holiness and all that is silver and true, but you've still got your wings, even if the are grey instead of white; which you are increasingly pissed about every day but we don't talk about that), but all goes how it goes or however the saying goes.

Anyway.

Anyway.

So, Purgatory may be the most boring place to ever be born in Gods Holy Name That of Which No One Can Utter, but, like, no that's about it. There's nothing really all that great here - well that means theres nothing dangerous here either. Things aren't all bad here, just superbly boring.

So.

So.

Here's the thing, you may or may not have broken an unspoken rule of the ages and seen what was happening in Assiah. Okay, look. It's not like you didn't leave Jamie in charge and Trevor after them. Mainly because everyone likes Jamie and Trevor actually has a brain, anyway.

You don't regret it.

This place is beautiful. Summertime in Norway is gorgeous and the locals are surprised you know the language — you don't look like you're from there. It makes sense, you aren't. They say that everywhere, that you look young (thanks Dad.) and that you look tired. They say that you're a tragedy, good luck on your way kid, are you homeless?

(Thanks Dad.)

Maybe they're all right, but they're so fragile, even if the are brilliant and bright. Like Lucifer was once; they're golden under their skin, sometimes they break each other to see it, that unholy inside that can only be god given (does your blood bleed blue, does it, mister?). You're a tragedy, they're right about that part at least, and you don't really have qualms with it as much has you have qualms with, again, people knowing your name. You hate that, so you've given yourself a — what do humans call it again? — лакап ат, maybe. You don't really remember. You don't really care to, either.

You grin, all human human human teeth, flat like a herbivore, sharp at the canine, close the rest of your eyes. You are human, like this. Human. You wonder what that means — to be human. To change with the sun, to age with the moon.

(Does your blood bleed blue?)

You're a ghost like this, the people you haven't got to yet, the people that aren't ready, yet.

(Does it mister?)

Humans are strange - you picked a genderless form; slick the whole way down, like one of those dolls you saw in America, KEN DOLLS, but thin, like a pencil. The mechanical ones in Korea, specifically; it was fun in Korea, even though the language is unnecessarily complicated, like English. Stupid English, being stupid. English doesn't English properly. You try the foods from everywhere these, all over every region of every country (Africa is so diverse it melts your heart — or the mockery of whatever is beating in your chest; so many languages and cultures all coexisting, you find it so interesting that so many different things are so close to each other—).

You wonder how two-thousand languages came to find themselves so different so close together — you'd shifted yourself there, but you could never quite fit in, you look similar enough, but something is always off when they meet you they say —

Where are you from, sir?

Japan is your last stop on the trip, then you'll pick a place to stay; to live in until you're bored out of your mind. You think it could be fun, could be gold; head spun until you're just broken glass and shattered teeth (you can grow yourself back, rip your skin off and grow a new shell).

(Do you bleed blue? My daddy said that―)

There is a god under your skin and it breaks your breathe until it becomes smoke. You are cold going into rooms, like a corpse. Like a ghost.

(Do you bleed blue mister? Do you? Do you?)

You stop when you get there; the airport is on fire. You look like a child — thanks dad — you don't know whether to scream or cry or laugh yourself into nothing. You don't do any of them. You shift your face into the approximation of despair.

A man taps your shoulder, "Kid, you okay?"

"My—" you say, make your throat scratchy like you're trying not to cry cry cry (maybe you want to; human bodies are strange). "—my mama was in there." You lie. "My mama's gone forever now."

(You don't have a mother, you've never had one, your father is a God. Your father is God. You are as divine as they come, unholy in the way broken teeth are; bones snapping distantly like a twig in the woods those Americans are so proud of. You are an orphan in the way all children with estranged parents are.)

"Kid―"

"Tsubaki Kiku." You tell him. "My mama's Tsubaki Nikto."

"Well, uhm. Do you have a place to stay?"

You turn to him, you've met enough war criminals, dead and alive, to fake the hollow in your eyes.

"Mama said it was a surprise," you tell him. "she said we were visiting where my papa grew up."

"Oh," he looks crestfallen. "I'm sorry to hear that."

You've won.

_

Shiro is pretty nice. He thinks you're thirteen, a year older than both his kids. You don't really care to tell him he's off by several millennium.

You're just nice like that.

He also lives in a monetary. Which is.. weird, but good for him and his kids you guess, they're your brothers and sisters under the eyes of your father or― whatever. You don't really care enough to explore the whole idea of your fathers' domain.

It's unnecessarily complicated the way that bastard played things out.

(Thanks Dad.)

Shiro opens the door. A murmur startles through the church. You tilt your head, house haven't seen a monastery since you were a kid. Way back when the first one was being built.

(Humans are so strange.)

Two kids run out. They're off center, the taller one is squishy looking with bright blue eyes and teeth that only come from half breeds, and the other one is thin and sick looking, too big glasses and two moles under his eye. There's another one under his lip. One the other side of his face.

(You wonder if your brother knows how much his half breeds take after him ― the small one looks at you with a cruel calculation that's so familiar to dear old Luci before the fall it's almost nostalgic; the taller one just, well, looks kinda exactly like him in the midstage of his madness. When his hair started to lighten and his eyes went feral.)

"Hey, Yukio, Rin, this is―ah."

"You didn't ask for a name dad!? You just let'em in?" The taller on says.

"Or did you forget it?" Shorter one proceeds.

"Tsubaki Kiku." You say. "Nice to meet you." You say.

"Why are you just two flowers?"

"My mama likes kiku's," you say. Ah, wait, your mama is dead. "My mama liked kiku's." You repeat, stronger on the liked so that they don't get any ideas. "She used to put them on the table." Which is a lie, Ava did that because she wanted to brighten up the place. Jamie was ecstatic, because they're a gremlin that never grew out of their flower crown phase.

Trevor was pissy about it but Trevor, as you've been told, is an Emo Boy Who Pierced His Ears At A Claire's In The Bronx and Should Not Get An Opinion. You're recently found out what a Claire's is and as such, if you ever return, you will mock Trevor until he tells you to stop. Which he won't. Trevor is just. Trevor.

Anyway.

Anyway.

What in the hell were you talking about again?

You can't wipe off this satisfaction, you think, finding an otherworldly secret. Your nephews. So you play the game of the grieving son. You create fake papers that government workers do not remember existing, but do not think too hard about. You become real, documents of Tsubaki Kiku and Tsubaki Nikto, those workers will ignore the impossibility of someone naming their daughter nobody, it's a fun little game you play.

Humans are so much fun.

(Hey mister hey mister hey mister hey mister―

Do you bleed blue? Do you? Do you?)

_

The taller one is Rin, and he is far more like his father. Like your brother. You wonder what will become of him.

You wonder what Luci dearest will do once Rin once his body isn't ready to implode at any moment. When his emotions aren't his whole self.

_

Yukio is a small little shit. He's about yay high and he's got the memory of a Beluga whale. Which is to say a marvelous one for something as unevolved as him; compared to his brother at least.

You prefer Yukio for that, but Yukio doesn't much like you, he looks at you like you're a bad omen, and technically you are. He has ever right to look at you like that, but you don't like it.

(You fix his brain so it looks over the ugliest parts of you, the cold detachment in your eyes and the macabre fascinating you have when you stare at the things that are minutes away from your domain.)

_

About half a year into this life of yours in the Okumura family, Shiro announces you'll be legally in the family.

You smile, as much as you can, which isn't much at all. "Yay." You say, snatching a pocky from Yukio when he isn't looking.

"Hey!" He says, like you've snatched his soul instead of a piece of candy.

"Hi Yucchan―"

"Give it back―"

You smile for real now, all big and wide, laughing like the maniac you are.

_

You find the book wedged behind a few other scripts.

It's one of those wildly innacurate Latin to modern Japanese translations. Shit. Are they really using these for Arias' these days? No wonder demons have a fucking laughing fit when they get to Assiah, these are the most ineffective verses you've ever seen in your immortal life.

You steal yourself with a red pen and a binder of loose leaf. The school Shiro put you in leaves you bored off your ass anyway, so.

So.

So you maybe spend two weeks translating every Latin book there by hand. Because you're bored.

"The hell are you doing?"

You don't really want to explain how bad people are at translation and why you're correcting it, so you pretend you didn't hear anything and he leaves you.

You close the last book.

(You are a ghost like this, you are hollowed out and satisfied. Better than all your brothers and sisters; better than ever single angel out there. You are AZREAL, Bringer of Death And The End.)

(Dear brother you know just as I how we do not bleed white and gold like the others; I bleed black little brother and you―)

(Do you mister mister mister? My daddy said that you―)

(Do you?)

There is a process in which the oxygenated blood creates a false appearance of red in the human eye in what is really a kind of purple that dries brown. Hemoglobin―

You do not have a soul.

You are not human, and no matter what you say, what you dress yourself in, make your skin out to be, you are― AZREAL, Bringer of Death And The End. Nothing can change that. Nothing will.

It would all be - ah. What did the hebrew dutch call it? For no reason, ach - stahm azoy. Or something of the like.

(Do you think that He's lonely up there?)

(Lonely enough to destroy everything He loves.)

_

Your uniform is itchy. Three collar is suffocating; the expectations on you are like a necklace of gold. Weighing you down.

The teacher's all look the same, the students blend into study groups and friends; people shift but never quite change — gang life takes away half of them because that's the neighborhood they live in and fourteen is plenty early in this place.

You scrape your knees like this, get blood between your lips; you find it fascinating. You're weird, so you are different, so you are wrong. So you deserve to curl up and die; your hands are covered with your own blood and you smile about it because you don't bleed blue in this body, with this human host you've shifted for you. You are mortal like this, all brown eyes and smooth skin and hair that shifts in your hands.

Life goes on.

You find yourself a club, you find yourself a friend (her name is Paku and her best friend is at a different school) and you pick yourself up from everything.

You are here; alive in the way only humans can be, awake in the way only human can be — living in the way only humans can; you are made of carcass bones and the screams of a dying child. You are all red insides and centipede spine, Asteroth has no power over your human soul and neither does your brother; Lucifer and his weary skin may unfold in hell. You are as unholy as they come, untainted. You are beautiful. You are human.

"Hey, Paku?" You say, its the last day of school and you're turning fifteen in two weeks. Her friend a three months younger than her, and is a grade below. "Do you wanna come to my birthday?"

"I—" she goes. "I can't, Izumo'll get jealous and we've been friends for so long."

"Oh," you say. You don't care much , it's a fake thing you've spit upon your shoulders. "okay, see you."

Humans are so strange, you think, you just said it was okay but she's looking at you like you'll take offense to it. (Does she think you'll be angry? You won't. You weren't really ever alive when you were first made, just a puppet for your father.)

(Thanks Dad.)

You're alienated but not like you were when you were Azreal. This is the best you've ever had; the worst you've ever thought of, hell and heaven so intricately in twined the humans don't even know the difference. It's funny, you think, how socially horrible they are, how they commit atrocities in the eyes of The One Who Shall Not Be Named For The Sake of The Humans and call it a dream, following their own hearses. 

You're tired like this. 

(Do you cry red like a god? Do you bleed blue? Mister mister mister my daddy said that you were like him—)

You don't look like yourself anymore, and you don't know what that means, but you think it might be a good thing. You've put yourself back together and you look like this; like a replica for a ghost nobody knows; the haunting between lives. You are the holiest unholy thing. A walking contradiction In human skin with the soul of an angel that did not quite fall. 

(There are rumors in this place, that you're so out of it because your mothers death drew you to drugs. You don't get that because one, you don't have a mother, and two, you tried heroin in America and it wasn't even that good.)

Maybe that's why nobody hangs out with you — because you're a drug addict with dead parents who lives in a monastery. You're a menace. You are a freak.

You're human.

_

"Kiku?"

"Yeah, Yuki?" You don't look up from your project. "What's up kid?"

"I'm not even—" he pushes his glasses up and takes in a breathe. "—do you know what an exorcist is?"

You turn to him, then. You wonder if you should tell him you taught the first one. "Yeah, they fight off all the demons in Assiah and protect us humans from hell or something, right? There are a bunch of classes like the ones with swords and guns and, ah, tamers, I think, and the ones that say the phrases." You squint at him. "Aria's. Maybe."

He looks surprised. "Yeah, how'd you."

"My dad was really into that stuff before." You say. The before is the now, still, your father is Holy with the capital H and everything ― made of sunrises and blue clouds. "Well, you know."

Yukio nods.

"Well, there's this.. school and. Uh. Kiku would you ever be interested in being an Exorcist?"

You look at him, you blink and the world pauses; you give yourself the time to break him and built him back up.

You blink. Play.

You smile. "Sure, sounds fun."

_

The day Shiro dies you are too far away to do anything. You're working some two bit job an hour away and the trains are delayed. It doesn't make sense to you, so you run, run, run, freeze the world and shift your way there.

There's a man standing next to Run by a headstone.

He turns to you and you know then and there that you are going to fake being human forever for the fun of it.

"Who the hell are you?" You hiss at him, knowing full well who his is.

Yukio and Rin both turn to you.

"You must be Tsubaki Kiku. I'll be your new guardian in replacement for the late Shiro Fujimoto."

This is Samuel, your nephew. He's a walking red flag, but, well,  red has always fascinated you.